So I went to work today to find a regular bitching at my boss about the government. This regular is an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam. My friend and I had been working at him for a long time, because we saw in him the makings of a great anarchist. Shortly after I gfot there he began talking about the $2 trillion that the fed lost this past year (it was supposedly for the “stimulus package”). Seeing as how most anarchists these days start with a suspicion of the Fed, I told him, “This is why we should shut down the Fed” I was delighted to hear his reply: “Fuck shutting them down. Start it on fire and shoot them as they run out.” I was like, “Do you really feel that way?” He replied, “I want to see some pink spray coming from their foreheads.” I couldn’t be more pleased.

He’s already big on minorities’ rights. He used to teach school at an Indian reservation and is disgusted at how we treat the true owners of this land.

This guy is a baby-boomer, which is what makes him such a big win for us. Too often, anarchists are depicted as restless youth who don’t really know what they want. If we can win this guy over, we can win the average worker. Don’t stop at shutting down the fed; shut down the entire system. One day we will have our revolution. I only hope that day comes in my lifetime,

I suppose being trans I should at least say something about Amanda Simpson. In a nutshell, I think her being trans shouldn’t be a big issue. Quite simply, she’s the best person for the job. Almost 30 years experience, multiple degreees from good schools, and she’s a former board member of a huge national organization.

I think Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the topic was best. You can find it on the NCTE’s homepage. If it’s not still there, or you don’t care to look, allow me to paraphrase: “Shut the fuck up, right wing. This woman’s got qualifications coming out the ass.”

If you’re wondering why I didn’t say anything till now, it’s because I just heard about this whole thing on Sunday. You see, I get my news from CNN, which hasn’t said a single word as far as I know. That’s not to say they didn’t cover it at all; all I’m saying is I watch 40+ hours of CNN a week so one would think I’d have heard something if they covered it.

I was browsing a trans forum when I saw something that made me think we need to have a little discussion about biopolitics and eugenics. For those of you who aren’t up on your Nazism, let me first explain what these two theories are.

Eugenics is the idea of “good breeding.” Eugenics proponents usually believe in a cleansing of the gene pool by only allowing people with desirable trait to reproduce.

Biopolitics is the idea that the state is a living organism, complete with “parasites” that need to be “cut out.” Usually these parasites are the poor and/or minority groups (blacks, gays, etc.). (I am currently writing an article for the Anarcho-syndicalist Review about how biopolitics is essentially true, except that the “parasites” are the elite: bankers, politicians, etc. When I’m done with it I’ll post it here as well.)

Both of these theories are usually associated with the far right (e.g. Nazism, Stalinism, etc.). They are, however, alive and well in mainstream America. Eugenics’ current form is in the pharmaceutical industry. By charging exorbitant amounts of money for essential drugs (cancer meds, antipsychotics, etc.), they ensure that the poor (uninsured) are less able to receive necessary health care. This is especially true with cancer medications; by denying such meds to the uninsured, they are hoping that the lower classes will die out and only the elite will be able to fight such a threatening ailment. It’s also true with trans people; they hope that by denying us essential support in our transitions, we will either self-destruct due to feeling “trapped” in a gender role we don’t identify with, or that we go broke transitioning. hat way, we are unable to breach the class lines and move up in the world. (Their plot is porving harder to implicate than they thought, though; they seemed to assume that we would simply roll over and die.)

Any way, the reason I wanted to talk about these topics is because in the past I’ve heard people talk of a “gay gene,” and now I see there is talk of a “trans gene.” These may seem like liberal notions, since they would seem to prove once and for all that homosexuality/transgenderism are natural (i.e., genetic). However, the far right is secretly parying to their “wrathful god” that this turns out to be the case. If these “lifestyles” are truly genetic, then they can once and for all be wiped out. The right hopes for a gay/trans gene, because if they were to discover such a gene, that means they could either: 1.) Figure out how to deactivate it, thereby “curing” alleged “sexual deviants”, or 2.) Identify individual carriers of these genes and take steps to prevent them from breeding.

I strongly urge all LGBT people to abandon hopes of such genes and stop talking about them as if they were a godsend. If such genes exist, they must never be discovered; it is vital to our existence. Fortunately, I highly doubt that a trans gene does exist (see my post on my views regarding gender), and I think that being gay/bisexual is a matter of fetishism. For instance, I am attracted to women, but what that means is that I have fetishes for soft skin, a curvy body, less muscle definition, and other things deemed “feminine.” I highly doubt being gay is genetic, I think it’s much more complicated than that.